[Rclark]

Vudu is the worst? You must live in some bad service area, Vudu on my set comes to about 80% bluray quality, it's actually pretty stunning. The quality depends on your internet speed, mine's very fast and I dont use WiFi.

Vudu is easily the best of all services.

[kenreau]

I'm baffled as well.  My internet speed runs +/- 20Mbps and it is hard wired ethernet to the OPPO.  Comcast (monopoly) is our only internet service provider and, fwiw, their TV picture quality was/is so poor (overly compressed, fuzzy, ghoasting, etc.) I changed to Dish satelite just for TV.  The Dish PQ is 50% better.  Our neighborhood is roughly 10 years old so that really shouldn't be an excuse unless they have allowed too many subscribers for the main service trunk line.

Kenreau

Vudu is the worst? You must live in some bad service area, Vudu on my set comes to about 80% bluray quality, it's actually pretty stunning. The quality depends on your internet speed, mine's very fast and I dont use WiFi.

Vudu is easily the best of all services.

[coverto]

Although Netflix will state a requirement of an Internet connection of 3 Mbps for HD content, that only insures that you won't have buffering and stuttering, but the stream will still be automatically downgraded with a higher compression rate if your Internet connection is unable to sustain > 5-6 Mbps.

This must be the key variable. I've got Verizon DSL in NYC, which can't sustain much better than 1.3Mbps. Pathetic.

[Rclark]

I have Comcast as well, and for whatever reason, I've been blessed with a very strong, stable connection. Also, I was using wifi for a good while but got a tremendous boost by just going straight in with a cat 5 cable. I haven't unplugged it since. Wifi is decent but is no way to watch a movie unless you're just casually playing something almost in the background and don't care.

As far as Vudu, a friend brought over the Thor bluray and I had it rented from Vudu, and it was also available on Netflix, just to compare. We used the scene were Thor is first introduced and you see him from behind wearing that red cape. Netflix was very watchable, certainly much better than a dvd would be, crisp and sharp, Bluray was by far the best obviously, all the colors and light just glowing onscreen, nice and smooth images, and his cape just the most vivid red, color color color everywhere, and on Vudu, like I said, gets to within 80% of that, just a stunning image quality for a streamed movie. And audio also very good.

[squirrel_nut]

I have an Oppo BDP-83SE w/ a Pio 720p 42" plasma viewed from 7.5 ft. away & in general greatly prefer DVD upconverted movies/ shows to Netflix & even some Blu-ray transfers.

This chart outlines recommended viewing distance in order to see benefits of greater resolution.  Most people sit too far away from TV screen to take advantage of greater resolution anyways.

great chart, brother.  we sit approx 10-12ft away from our 55", which probably looses some of the benefits of Blue-R for us.

i believe one factor lost in this conversation is that TVs are not equal when it comes to interpolating the video resolution down from  the native resolution. your TV supports 480p but may have been optimized for 720 or 1080. i think a lot of manufacturers dont put the effort in to optimizing 480 in their hardware/softwr.  i know this is true especially in the computer market. i dont see why it would be any different for TVs. 

[ajzepp]

Vudu is the worst? You must live in some bad service area, Vudu on my set comes to about 80% bluray quality, it's actually pretty stunning. The quality depends on your internet speed, mine's very fast and I dont use WiFi.

Vudu is easily the best of all services.

I love Vudu...it's the main reason I decided to drop the bluray option on my Netflix subscription and just use Netflix streaming and Vudu.

Kenreau: Something is wrong, cause Vudu PQ is pretty amazing to my eyes. Like you, I stream via my Oppo player...I have yet to have an experience with Vudu that wasn't near-perfect. I agree with RClark that it's still a notch below an actual bluray, but it gets me plenty close enough that I don't miss the bluray.

[Rclark]

@ squirrel nut, no, you can tell at any viewing range that you're watching a bluray versus a dvd.. it's pretty obvious. Bluray is GORGEOUS... And nobody optimizes 480 because 480 is long dead  . Heck 1080P already has white hairs and wrinkles...

I have a 32 inch 1080P LCD and it's blatantly obvious bluray is better on that, same as my 52" plasma. Resolution is not the only advantage. It's not just resolution here, bluray has better visual quality in every way possible. Come on, 10 Megabytes a second versus .6 , if that... 480p/dvd is pretty much a step above VHS tape and that's about it.

It's only going to get better as Bluray is scalable up to a terrabyte of storage for 4K and 8K resolution. More storage and larger amounts of data/sec.

[squirrel_nut]

i think i will make one more observation before stepping aside...

with all the componentry that brings a picture to your high def TV, from the wall socket to room lighting conditions and the
quality of your own vision, there is only one that doesnt effect your viewing experience,
the HDMI cable. (i hope nobody bites on that one, considering all the studies that show just that  )

this makes any discussion of picture comparisons mute unless you invite me over for a look-see!